Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/173

 FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO HILDEBRAND 161 level of their pretensions. It was in entire accordance with these principles that the popes under Hildebrand's guidance authorised William of Normandy to depose King Harold of England, and bestowed upon the Normans in Italy lordships which were in no other sense theirs to give. Nearly the whole of Gregory's pontificate was passed in a struggle with the Emperor Henry iv. Gregory himself began the battle by forbidding Henry to make ecclesiastical appoint- ments. Thus began the long contest over the question of what was called Lay Investitures. There had been an irregularity about Gregory's own accession to the papacy, which warranted Henry in retaliating by declaring Gregory to be deposed from an office which he had usurped. Gregory replied by Henry IVi excommunicating Henry and deposing him from and the royal office in virtue of his own authority as St. Gre S° r y VIL Peter's successor, to bind and to loose. Henry first found him- self obliged to humiliate himself in the most abject manner before the pope at Canossa, since the excommunication was seized by his own subjects as an excuse for revolt. But he was able in turn, on the recovery of his secular supremacy in Germany, to set up an antipope, and drive Gregory into that exile in which he died. It was during these years that a family of Norman warriors carved out for themselves kingdoms in the Mediterranean lands. At first they appeared merely as adventurers taking The Normans part in the struggles of various factions in Southern ta Italy. Italy and Sicily, which was now in the hands of the Arabs. One brother, Robert Guiscard, mastered most of Southern Italy, got the title of Duke of Apulia from the pope, and began to carry his arms across the Adriatic. A second brother Roger conquered Sicily. The Normans, it may be remarked, could generally be relied upon to side with the pope against the emperor; and it was to the protection of Robert Guiscard that Gregory escaped from Rome. William, Duke of Normandy, conquered England in 1066 ; and for some time to come England was The Normans governed by foreign kings whose most important in England, interests lay in their continental dukedoms and 1066# counties, quite as much as in their English kingdom. England L